Intelligent Melt Shop (iMeltshop)

In steel production, the development of automation and process control systems has grown in parallel with the development of metallurgical technologies applied to individual production stations.

In the classic and widely used architecture of these process control systems, there are solutions designed to obtain the best performance from each of the individual production stations.

The integration between the different production stations is limited to the transmission of process data between a station that has completed the heat in progress and the next station that receives it for subsequent processing.

Even in the presence of a higher control level (Level 3), generally used to transmit production orders to individual production stations, the coordination and management of steel production line is managed by one or more production managers who can, if necessary, can have the support of responsible operating at individual production stations.

This scenario requires a new approach to the process control theme. Hence the request to define a new tool for the process control, designed for the coordination, in real time, of the entire production line, realizing the integration of all work stations.

Tenova iMeltShop is the answer

The purpose of the proposed system is to ensure that the melting responsible has the support in decisions of a tool that allows to automatically drive production flow (from raw material used in charge to continuous casting) and process choices, depending on preset events and rules.

The system also provides a complete collection of information, in real time and at the end of the process, that can be used for analysis and continuous production improvement, product quality and plant maintenance.

The iMeltShop system can, therefore, be defined as a manager of steel plant production process that works by inserting itself between process control of single equipment (Level 2) and higher level systems (MES, ERP, etc.). To this end, improves dynamic control and real time monitoring of the entire steel manufacturing flow, with the aim to maximize the availability of the production line improving the performance.